


Hey, Jack

by Insilico



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Ambiguity, Fix-It, Gen, Hallucinations, Kidnapping, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Rescue, Restraints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29390823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insilico/pseuds/Insilico
Summary: Mac's been held captive for weeks. His savior is the last person he would ever have expected.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	Hey, Jack

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post 5x05.
> 
> Just another Jack-better-not-be-dead story.

It had been two days, Mac guessed, since anyone had been into his room. Maybe one since he'd stopped hearing any exterior noise at all. It was even harder to say how long he'd been captive overall.

Despite the ambient room temperature being fairly warm and even humid, the metal floor he laid on was still inherently cold. A shackle circled his ankle, which connected to a chain and then finally to an eyelet that was expertly welded to the floor. Whoever had done it had been good. He’d spent days searching for a weakness in its construction, and he hadn’t been able to find a single one.

The floor was as well kept as the shackle. Smooth and fairly clean, there was hardly a hint of rust yet except for the patina preexisting on the metal already. He was half a foot short of reaching a wall in any direction, and the ceiling… the ceiling was even further away. It did offer him two things, though. There was a grate, through which his captors used to enter with a ladder, and there was a constant drip of water.

Currently, it was splashing consistently off his forehead at a rate of one drop every 4 seconds. All he had to do was direct those drops to the metal chain and wait. At an average of .3 microns a year it would only take- oh, thousands, give or take a few decades to account for any helpful impurities- for the chain to corrode enough for him to snap it free. Mac grunted, the sound a mix of a laugh and a groan.

“Too long,” he rasped to himself, his voice not loud enough to even return an echo to him. In only a few weeks his foot would be thin enough to slip out of the shackle on its own. Too bad it wouldn’t be under his command anymore. Mac folded his hands gingerly onto his stomach, his fingers slowly, repetitively circling one of the plastic buttons on his shirt.

Too goddamn long.

“Hey, hoss. That you down in that tin can?”

Mac blinked once, then twice, and his hands stilled. Auditory hallucinations- right on time. His blood glucose had been low for a while now. It had been days since he’d last eaten.

“Talk to me man. You still with me?” Scraping joined the voice now, and Mac closed his eyes.

If it had been a day ago, and he’d been a little more sure of his state of mind, of his body- he would have called this particular manifestation cruel. But hearing Jack’s voice here, now, when all he had left to do was wait? Something was comforting about it.

“Hey! I’m talkin’ to you!” The scraping was getting louder, metal on metal. The sound was kind of annoying, the way it echoed around in his ‘tin can.’

Mac worked his jaw a little, his tongue feeling heavy. “Hey, Jack,” he said, voice gritty. The grating up above paused.

“‘Hey, Jack?’ I come back from the dead to save your skinny ass and I get a ‘Hey, Jack?’ Wow, man,” Jack called down, and the grating reached a crescendo before stopping altogether with a loud thunk.

There was only a second of time between the next two drops that hit his forehead, and then they stopped completely. Mac opened his eyes in time to see the ladder dropping down, and a familiar shape swing his legs onto the top rung.

Visual hallucinations too? Ok. Now it was cruel.

Jack made his way down the ladder, jumping the last few rungs. His boots splashed against a small puddle of water when he landed.

“They took your pants? Rough,” Jack said, turning towards him.

Mac grunted and closed his eyes again. He didn’t want to see whatever it was his mind decided Jack should look like. Burned to the bone, maybe.

“Uh- I used the zipper to make a string saw,” he explained, clearing his throat miserably. Jack chortled.

“Course you did- hey, man. Open your eyes for me, huh?” Jack asked, and suddenly Mac saw a red glow through his eyelids like a light had been turned on. He squinted his eyes shut tighter.

“You’re not real,” he sighed out, the words barely a breath.

There was silence, and even though he couldn’t see Jack, or hear him, it was a very offended silence. 

The red glow dulled slightly, and he sensed motion beside him. A soft pressure descended onto his chest, and a similar one touched the side of his face before patting him gently.

“This feel fake to you?” Jack asked. Mac’s eyes opened involuntarily, a simple shock response. He was met with more light than he’d seen in a while. There was a flashlight clipped to Jack’s vest, but it was aimed off to the side. He squinted. 

The face looking down at him was familiar. It wasn’t burned. There were fresh scars he didn’t recognize, but the expression he knew. Jack was worried. The hand against his chest jostled him slightly and then he pulled back, turning to run the flashlight up and down Mac’s body as his hands hovered in a way that signified he was looking for wounds. “What’d they do to ya?” He asked, hissing in sympathy when he reached the ankle that was attached to the shackle; the flesh there had long ago been rubbed raw and was probably sporting an infection at this point. He hadn’t looked at it in awhile.

Mac didn’t bother to answer. His ears had started buzzing and he’d barely made out the question anyway. He rolled forcibly onto his side, curling slightly in the other man’s direction. His eyes locked on Jack, his brows creasing into a heavy line.

Jack leaned back from where he’d been examining the restraint, and looked over at him.

“Yeah, buddy- whoa, man-” Mac was groping for his arm, and Jack let him take it. Bony fingers dug in, feeling, clinging to him.

“Jack-” Mac gasped.

“I’m here. We’re gonna get you out of here,” Jack said, turning towards him and clasping his hand over Mac’s to still his frantically searching fingers. He moved Mac’s hand down a few inches and let the fingers dig into his wrist. Feeling his pulse. Mac’s brows remained furrowed as he felt the steady beat, his eyes slowly working up to Jack’s face.

“But you’re dead,” Mac whispered, the last word cracking on his tongue.

Jack’s shoulders slumped as Mac spoke, but he turned away to focus on the shackle again. “I’m real sorry 'bout that. I'm here now. I even brought a friend,” he said, pulling something from his pocket. Mac saw a flash of red before Jack was hunched over his ankle. “Man, you make this look so much easier than it is. Where’d they get this thing, Fort Knox?” he said after a moment, and gentle vibrations indicated to Mac that Jack was working to pick the lock.

Jack didn’t pick locks.

Mac sighed, closing his eyes again. “Be… gentle with the torque,” he warned.

“Be a lot faster if you could sit up and help,” Jack said, and there were hands suddenly at his shoulders, easing him into a seated position. The change in altitude had his head reeling, and his eyes rolled wildly for a moment as he tried to get his bearings. Hands kept him steady. Jack was talking still, Mac could almost feel the low murmur of it, but he couldn’t hear it over the whooshing in his ears.

Jack took his hand and placed a familiar weight in it. Mac blinked slowly down at his swiss army knife, unable to keep the tremor from his hand that wasn't entirely from the weight of the knife. Jack guided his hands down towards the shackle, and Mac realized moving hurt.

“I know bud. But we gotta get you outta here, ok?” Jack said, helping him to open up the correct tools. His hands worked only through muscle memory, and Mac found himself closing his eyes. He didn’t need to be able to see the lock to get it open. It took longer than normal to get undone, but soon enough they were greeted by a satisfying click of the lock disengaging. Jack reached down and pulled the shackle open, and it dropped to the ground with a resounding thunk. Mac dragged his eyes open, and it took him too long to realize that he was now staring at his bare ankle.

“That’s a mighty big frown you got there for a freed man,” Jack said, clapping him gently on the shoulder. Mac dragged his gaze up to look at Jack, and the older man pulled a face. “Man, don’t look at me like that. I swear on my grave that this is happening. Right now,” he said as he stood up.

“Exactly. You have a grave. It’s granite. Right next to your Dad’s,” Mac said, his gaze dropping back down to his ankle because tilting his head back too far made the room start spinning again.

“Yeah. I have one, so I can actually swear on it,” Jack said. “We gotta move. Can you stand or am I gonna have to heft you outta here on my own?” He asked, reaching down to lift Mac onto his feet. Mac swayed instantly, his knees on the verge of buckling. “Alright. We’ll do it the hard way. That’s fine,” Jack said, grabbing Mac around the chest before he could crumple.

“Still think a ghost is carrying you up the ladder?” Jack grunted a moment later, when Mac was over his shoulder and they were awkwardly climbing up towards the grate.

“Body’s shutting down. Concussion and low blood glucose means my head could be showing me anything it wants right now and I have no way of knowing what’s real or not,” Mac explained, even as his one free hand clasped the back of Jack’s vest as tightly as it could.

“Come on, let’s Inception this shit. You got the top you could spin right in your hand. That’s your own knife, ain’t it?” Jack asked. “When’d you last have it?”

Mac had to think.

He'd been on a mission when he'd been taken. He’d been arguing with Desi, something about his head not being in the game. The knife was out so he could pry open an electrical box. Footsteps approached from behind. He'd thought it was Desi. It hadn't been.

"Dropped it at the warehouse. I was-"

"Nope. I'll stop you right there. It ain't that knife. Take another look," Jack said.

Mac frowned. He couldn't look, per se, but he turned the knife over and over in the hand that still clasped it- there was no pocket in the boxers he'd been left in.

The knife was definitely his. Any SAK would probably feel familiar to him, but running his fingers over the hard red plastic he could feel his thumbnail nicking grooves and dents and each one told the story of a mission. He paused when he reached a particularly large slice, edges worn smooth now. It ran all the way from one edge to the other.

"Lucky knife," Mac croaked.

"Yep. Stopped you from getting gutted like a fish that time down in Croatia," Jack agreed. "And?"

"I gave it- I gave it to you when you left."

"Sure did. How would it be in your hand now if I hadn't brought it back?" Jack asked, as though this explained everything.

Mac wanted to say that his mind could have created this, too, as much as it has created Jack. But the detail was so specific. He'd forgotten that he'd even given the thing to Jack.

"Ah yeah, cat's got your tongue now, huh?" Jack asked. They had reached the top of the ladder, and Jack braced himself and pushed Mac through first before he climbed out. He sat hard on the floor beside Mac, catching his breath. He reached up to wipe his forehead with his wrist, and was lowering his arm back down when he caught Mac's gaze. It wasn't an expression he had seen before.

Jack pulled one side of his lips into a smile, but it turned out to be more of a grimace. He reached out a hand tentatively towards Mac's, but he didn't touch him yet.

"Aww, come on man. I left you clues. You didn't figure a one out with that big ol' head of yours? Our Manniversary mean nothing to ya, hoss?"

Mac blinked. "The Mirage. Pointed at… Kovacs being a false flag."

It was Jack's turn to blink right back.

"Out of all them- that's the one you think of? Dude. My man. How about the time we were kidnapped and faked my death?" Jack demanded, waving the hand that Mac hadn't taken.

"We'd just been… to your funeral," Mac said, his voice thin, but his mind was racing- or trying to. Grasping for logic right now was like trying to hold onto a fistful of sand. He closed his eyes, but for only a moment. Whatever this was… if it was real, or if death was playing tricks with him- "It's good to see you, Jack," he whispered, reaching out for the older man's hand. Jack had looked away, his expression downcast, but at Mac's words he seemed to brighten some and he turned back towards him. Reaching out he clasped Mac's hand tightly.

"You too, brother," he said, his own voice cracking this time. He smiled. "Now let's blow this joint, huh?" 

\---

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first story I've written in years and the first for MacGyver. There's potential for another chapter but I haven't decided which direction to go yet!


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